This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning when the October mist still clung to the cobblestones of Copenhagen like the breath of ghosts. Sarah Jensen had been living in her cramped apartment above the bakery for three years, working as a translator for the university, when the formal envelope bearing an unfamiliar seal changed everything.

Inside, written in flowing script on cream-colored paper, was news that seemed too fantastic to be real. Her great-aunt Astrid, a woman she had met only once as a child, had left her an estate called Evermore in the remote forests of Jutland. The solicitor's letter was brief but clear: the property was hers, along with all its contents, provided she take residence within thirty days of receiving the notice.

Sarah remembered Aunt Astrid as a tall, ethereal woman with silver hair and eyes like winter storms. She had visited when Sarah was seven, staying only long enough to tell strange stories about trees that whispered secrets and rooms that remembered their inhabitants. Her parents had dismissed the stories as the eccentricities of an old woman, but Sarah had never forgotten the way Astrid's voice dropped to a whisper when she spoke of Evermore, as if the very walls might be listening.

Now, twenty-three years later, Sarah found herself standing at the iron gates of the estate as twilight painted the sky in shades of purple and gold. The house rose before her like something from a Gothic novel, its dark stone walls draped with ivy that seemed to pulse with life in the dying light. Tall windows stared down at her like hollow eyes, and the wind through the ancient oaks surrounding the property created a symphony of whispers that made her shiver despite her heavy coat.